The Walt Disney Company has acquired the rights to OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT. And somewhere in heaven, Walt Disney is smiling.Disney’s studio created the cartoon character in 1927. Producer Charles Mintz took over the series for Universal in 1928, forcing Walt to go independent and conceive Mickey Mouse. The rest, as they say, is history. Oswald remained in the custody of Universal Pictures for 77 years. Until today. According to the AP :

Sportscaster Al Michaels is moving to NBC and will broadcast Sunday night NFL games with John Madden, his partner on ABC during the past four seasons. In exchange for letting Michaels out of his contract with ABC and ESPN, which are owned by The Walt Disney Co., NBC Universal sold ESPN cable rights to Friday coverage of the next four Ryder Cups, granted ESPN increased usage of Olympic highlights and sold to The Walt Disney Co. the rights to “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,” a character in silent cartoons made by Walt Disney from 1927-28.

What does all this mean to us? For fans of classic animation, it means another volume of Walt Disney Treasures on DVD. For the Walt Disney Company, it returns the only missing piece of the company’s animation history. For Universal, it means that they no longer have to vault those bothersome black & white cartoons.It begs the questions: Who at Disney (ABC) or Universal (NBC) was even aware of this bargaining chip? Did Universal offer to throw Oswald in to get a much desired sportscaster? Or did Roy Disney, or maybe even John Lassester, ask to acquire this property? (Jim Hill speculates that Iger first read about Oswald on Cartoon Brew!)Will Oswald be the subject of a new Disney 2-D feature - or a new show on Toon Disney?Oh, and can Disney please buy the rest of the Walter Lantz library? Universal apparently has no plans to use it.To be continued…

Tags: Animation, Disney

MODERN ARF (Fantagraphics) is one of the most inspiring collections of cartoon artwork I’ve run across in a long time. I bought the book last summer and it’s become one of my frequent references for eclectic visual inspiration. The editor of MODERN ARF, cartoonist/historian/author Craig Yoe, calls ARF “the unholy marriage of art and comics.” Yoe is serious about dismantling the classifications of fine art and popular art. In one of the book’s pieces - a collection of cartoons about the subject of artists and models - a drawing by Picasso is shown alongside drawings by Milt Gross, André François, George Cruickshank, and Robert Crumb. Seeing Picasso and Milt Gross in such close proximity compels one to reexamine their preconceived ideas about these artists. Was Picasso a fine artist or a cartoonist? Was Milt Gross a cartoonist or a fine artist? Couldn’t we appreciate both of their art a lot more if we got rid of these superficial labels? In another piece, Yoe shows the influence of Jack Kirby on pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton, but he also shows how Kirby himself was influenced by Cubism. Other highlights include Salvador Dali storyboards for an unproduced mid-1930s film, the Art Deco comics of Antonio Rubino, crazed-perspective cartoons of Hy Mayer and a bizarre Jimmy Hatlo strip called THE HATLO INFERNO.

Yoe’s presentation of the artwork is beautiful with images printed large and clear. Text is minimal, with just enough writing to provide history and context. Much of the artwork in the book is over fifty years old, but Yoe’s exuberant visually-striking book design makes the cartoons seem as if they were created yesterday. Craig is currently working on the second installment of the ARF series, ARF MUSEUM. I saw a preview of this a few months back and it promises to be another winner. Even better, the ARF blog will debut in five days. Join the countdown at ArfLovers.com.

Nate Pacheco’s blog deserves a second mention in as many days. A couple years back, he tried to convince the Leo Burnett ad agency to make Tony the Tiger appealing again and return the character to its original Martin Provensen design. He asked some industry friends - Craig Kellman, Lou Romano, Conrad Vernon and Miles Thompson - to create some concept art for the pitch. Leo Burnett didn’t go for the idea. Now Nate has posted a bunch of that art on his blog HERE and encourages you to contact Leo Burnett and ask them to start creating appealing Frosted Flakes commercials again. Everybody I know always gripes about how lame and unappealing Tony the Tiger has been for the past couple decades, but nobody has taken an activist role like Nate to actually encourage the production of better commercials. Hopefully somebody at Leo Burnett is taking notes.

Over at Jaime Weinman’s Something Old, Nothing New blog, he’s posted a scene-by-scene analysis of which animators did what on the classic 1950 Robert McKimson cartoon HILLBILLY HARE. With the help of animator Greg Duffell, Weinman points out the differences in animators styles in the McKimson unit, comparing scenes done by Rod Scribner, Emery Hawkins, Charles McKimson, Phil DeLara and John Carey.The saddest part about the slow demise of hand drawn (2-D) animation over the past 30 years, is the loss of the animator’s individualistic personality in studio produced feature films, shorts and TV animation. Part of the fun of watching classic cartoons is the recognition of certain artists’ unique - sometimes eccentric - drawing style which stand out in bits and sequences: Irv Spence, Jim Tyer, Rod Scribner, Bobe Cannon, and Fred Moore’s loose limbed look pop to mind. Where are all the Bill Tytla’s and Ken Harris’s in today’s CG animation? Heck, where are they in anime or TV cartoons in general? Animated films and television shows today are so slick that this individual element has been eradicated in the final product. One of the reasons the “Making of/Art of” books (especially Pixar’s) are so fun is we get to see the individual styles of the artists behind the scenes. Rarely does this fun make it to the finished film. Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg and John Kricfalusi are among the few today whose animation style makes it through the process, and they carry on this tradition in projects they are involved with. It’s a significant element of what make their films so good, and what made the old cartoons so great.

Flash animator Nate Pacheco is working on translating the hard-edged, yet organic, style of mid-century illustrator Charles Harper into Flash animation. We’ve mentioned Harper’s work here before; he is an artist whose work has influenced many contemporary animation designers. Nate has posted a few tantalizing stills on his BLOG, and he says he’s working on the animation now. I’m not sure if this is a Renegade project or just a personal experiment, but it’s a terrific idea.

On Saturday night, Mark Kausler, upon accepting his June Foray Award at the Annie Awards ceremony, threw out a trivia question to the audience. He asked:

What characteristics do Ignatz Mouse from the 1936 Columbia Cartoon, “L’il Ainjil” and the Gremlin from the Bob Clampett 1943 Warner Bros. cartoon, “Falling Hare”, have in common, and who or what is it derived from?

Hint: It’s vocal.
Prize: Matted cel set-up from “It’s The Cat.”UPDATE: WE HAVE A WINNER! Robert Palmer of San Carlos, Ca. guessed the answer to the trivia question. It is Benny Rubin, originator of the “Yankee Doodle” laugh that both the Gremlin and Ignatz use in their respective cartoons.

An article from the San Francisco Business Times about DreamWorks Animation’s hiring binge.

Yesterday’s LA TIMES published a case study that explains how incompetent Hollywood types make animated features. Worthwhile reading. (If article registration is required, try BugMeNot.com).